Ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. This web site is my attempt to document, from my perspective, these "interesting times".

Monday, February 14, 2005

Stop it John! [Update with apology]

I may not be popular for saying this but I think John Aravosis of AMERICAblog
is being irresponsible with his "I'vegotasecret"
posts.

Let me count the ways...

1. It builds an expectation in his audience that he may not be able to
fulfill. At this point, unless the secret leads to the downfall of the house of
Bush, a significant number of people are going to be disappointed.

2. It provides a greater opportunity for his enemies to lay the groundwork
for refuting his story (he's apparently already clued Gannon/Guckert into the
secret). Woodstein didn't inform Mitchel of their story on the CRP slush fund
until minutes before the story went to press. By playing it the way he has, John
is giving Gannon/Guckert and whoever he is allied with plenty of time to develop
a counter-response.

3. It strings along his most loyal fans (again, he's already told Gannon/Guckert,
so he's told the enemy something that he isn't willing to tell his friends).
Reading the comments to the hint posts I am reminded of a bunch of puppies
yipping and leaping at a piece of meat held aloft by their master. Is that
really the kind of humiliating position you want your fans to be in John?

4. It diverts the energies of thousands of people in the blogosphere
into trying to figure out what Aravosis' secret is instead of trying to figure
out what Gannon/Guckert's secret is. Several valuable investigative man hours
have been wasted by followers of this story looking up pictures of cartoon
bulldogs on google.

5. It artificially inflates his audience in the exact same way as the evening
news teasers. Is that the kind of company you want to keep John?

John, please, if you have something important to say then say it. If you
aren't ready to say it, then just keep quiet about it until you are.

(And yes, I still will feel this way even after the secret is revealed and it
turns out to be the thing that leads to the fall of the house of Bush.)

UPDATE: I just want to be clear about something here: I am not
criticizing John for wanting to hold off on this story until he has it locked
down. That is the responsible thing to do. What is irresponsible is the way he
is stringing people along with these hint droppings. I am as interested in what
John has as is anyone and will analyze it independent of my thinking of how he
is handling it now. But regardless of how good the story turns out to be, the
way he is handling it now is just plain wrong.

UPDATE 2: I own John Aravosis an apology. I should have posted my
criticism to him in private first before doing so in public here, on dKOS and in
the comments section of his own blog. I should have given him the chance to
respond in private before going public.

I still stand by my criticism. But I was wrong in my method. I'm going to
leave this post up as is since the damage is already done and as an example of
how not to handle things like this.